Golf is a sport in which players direct a ball from a teeing ground into a target hole by a stroke or successive strokes of a club. As is well known in the art, a golf club consists of a shaft attached to a head, with the head having a striking face, a bottom surface, a heel end and a toe end. When the shaft is held by a player to attempt a stroke, the bottom surface is flush over the surface of the ground, the heel end of the head is proximate the player, the toe end points away from the player and the striking face is aligned to impact the golf ball when the club is swung or moved by the player. The distance and arc of the trajectory of the ball after it is struck depends on the loft of the striking face of the club selected. Loft is the angle at which the surface of the striking face lies relative to a perfectly vertical striking face.
In one version of golf, the player requiring the fewest strokes to complete 18 holes is declared the winner. In a number of forms of the game of golf, putting accounts for almost half of the strokes taken by a player.
The region immediately surrounding the target hole is known as the putting green. The putting green is typically a well maintained, close cropped and relatively smooth surface that may have undulating slope. Typically, each stroke with a lofted club directs the ball in an arc-shaped trajectory closer towards, and ultimately into, the target hole. When the ball is on the putting green, a player typically uses a club known as a putter to direct the ball into the target hole. A putter has little loft so that the putted ball rolls along the surface of the putting green rather than taking an arc-shaped trajectory. Fewer strokes may be achieved by accurately directing a ball on the green toward the target hole in accordance with the undulations of the green.
When a golf ball is on the green without any slope transverse to, or left or right of, the direct line between the ball and the target hole, the aiming line for the putt will be the direct line to the target hole and the putter head is squared to the line at impact.
One of the more difficult putts a right handed player can attempt is known as a left-to-right breaking putt (while the converse is equally true for a left handed player attempting a right-to-left breaking putt, for simplicity of explanation the present disclosure will be described in the context of a right handed player and a left-to-right breaking putt, recognizing that such disclosure would readily be adapted to accommodate a left-handed player).
In a left-to-right breaking putt, when a player stands behind the ball directly facing the hole, some segment of the surface of the green on the player's left-hand side is elevated relative to the surface of the green along the direct line between the ball and the hole. In such a context, if the direction of aim is the direct line towards the hole, after the ball is struck, gravity will cause the trajectory of the ball to break down the slope, away from, and to the right of, the trajectory along which the ball was directed. Such effects may be compensated for by increasing the force with which the ball is struck or by aiming the ball to the left of the hole.
However, even if such errors are eradicated so that the physics of alignment and force are correctly determined, the execution by the player may be inadequate. It is recognized that the player often has a tendency to let the club head drift or angle to the right (toward the hole) through impact when putting a left-to-right breaking putt, thus missing to the right of the target hole. This problem has been commonly referred to as missing on the “amateur side” of the hole, i.e. to the right side or “low side” of the hole.